KING-NECKED PHEASANT 311 



occupied. The success of the introduction of pheasants in the Northwestern 

 States is well known, but how amazingly the birds have thrived in certain 

 other sections is not generally appreciated. In South Dakota, according to the 

 Director of the State Department of Game and Fish, pheasants increased 

 steadily from the first, a fact justifying almost steady lengthening of the 

 open season and increase in the daily bag limit. The total bag in 1926 was 

 estimated at a million birds, and in 1927 from one and a half to two millions, 

 a record that has scarcely been approached in all our history by a single 

 species of game bird in a single State. 



William L. Finley contributes interesting details on the status of 

 the bird in Oregon, which, somewhat condensed, are as follows: 



For more than 20 years the success of the ring-necked pheasant seemed 

 to be complete in Oregon. The numbers of the birds increased and they 

 spread to all parts of the Willamette Valley and over into other valleys, 

 although thousands of the birds were killed each hunting season. Then there 

 came a period when the bird seemed to be just holding its own, and for the 

 past 20 years the population has been on the decrease. Many reasons have 

 been given for this decrease, as, for example, too much shooting or an increase 

 in enemies. 



One reason for the decrease in the number of pheasants in the Willamette 

 Valley may be a change in the life of the bird itself. It survives best where it 

 nests, roosts, and lives out in the open fields, where its watchfulness is always 

 a check upon its enemies. In the Willamette Valley during the past 20 years 

 the pheasant has come to be a bird of the woods, often lays its eggs in other 

 birds' nests, and is not so good a mother to its chicks as formerly, so that fewer 

 survive. It was the common thing late in summer or early in fall to flush a 

 covey of 8 to 15 birds, while nowadays it is very rare to see more than 4 to 6 

 young pheasants in a covey. 



Dr. J. C. Phillips (1928) says: 



The extraordinary vitality of the first birds set out by the writer at North 

 Beverly, Mass., in 1897 and 1898 was a most interesting feature. The broods 

 were at first large and the species did not appear to meet any natural checks 

 to its spread for a number of years. This initial " vigor," however, seems to 

 have been lost here as well as in other places where the pheasant has been 

 planted for 25 to 30 years. 



The following information regarding the pheasant from W. H. 

 Hudson (1902) is of interest in this connection: 



In Britain, where it has been permitted to run free in the woods for the last 

 sixteen to seventeen centuries, it is still scarcely able to maintain its existence 

 without the strictest protection and a great deal of attention on the part of man. 

 It is known that when the birds are left to shift for themselves they soon de- 

 crease in numbers, and eventually die out, except in a few rare cases where the 

 conditions are extremely favorable. How heavy the cost is of keeping pheas- 

 ants in numbers sufficient for the purpose of sport is well known to all those 

 who have preserves. 



The many thousands killed annually may well be the cause of the 

 failure of these birds to hold their own without artificial aid. The 

 extent to which this aid was given in Massachusetts in the year 1929 



